- Lancaster, England, United Kingdom
Bulent Diken
Lancaster University, Sociology, Faculty Member
Research Interests: Art History and Art
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Classical social theory and philosophy have focused predominantly on the life-forms of the settled. Indeed, both Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft, the two basic concepts of social theory, express sedentary life-forms. So it is not surprising... more
Classical social theory and philosophy have focused predominantly on the life-forms of the settled. Indeed, both Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft, the two basic concepts of social theory, express sedentary life-forms. So it is not surprising that the nomadic — that which is in movement — has been systematically excluded from the narrations of ‘society’ and ‘community’. The basic antagonism that characterizes the constitution of ‘the social’ is, therefore, nomadic movement versus fixed territories, transgression versus the law, flow versus borders. The ‘other’ of society is, in other words, not ‘community’ but the nomad.
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Page 1. THE CULTURE OF EXCE SOCIOLOGY FACING THE CAM 8 iULENT DIKEN AND CARSTEN BAGGE LAUSTSE Foreword by Zygmunt Bauma Also available as a printed book see title verso for ISBN details Page 2. ...
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Bülent Diken og Carsten Bagge Laustsen: Stalking your own shadow Tell me your enemy and I will tell you who you are. This article takes issue with the significant but often disavowed symbiotic relation between two contemporary enemies:... more
Bülent Diken og Carsten Bagge Laustsen: Stalking your own shadow Tell me your enemy and I will tell you who you are. This article takes issue with the significant but often disavowed symbiotic relation between two contemporary enemies: fundamentalism and the politics of security. We start with a metaphorical twinning, showing how these two enemies create, provoke, mimic and ultimately support each other. Then, by way of a discourse analysis, we show the way religion functions in Bush’s and Bin Laden’s discourses. Our claim is not (only) that the discourse of security is as religious as Bin Laden’s, but that politics of security as such is the religion of our times. We conclude by arguing that the dyadic interdependence between the two fundamentalisms – Islamic and Securiticised – is dissolving the democratic habitus in a post-political condition, a condition devoid of self-reflexivity and awareness of guilt.
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Chapter 12 Society with/out Organs Niels Albertsen and Bülent Diken The aim of this chapter is threefold. First we wish to explicate our under-standing of the Deleuzian understanding of 'the social'. Then we employ our... more
Chapter 12 Society with/out Organs Niels Albertsen and Bülent Diken The aim of this chapter is threefold. First we wish to explicate our under-standing of the Deleuzian understanding of 'the social'. Then we employ our explication in an experimental mapping of the field of ...
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Most significant problems of contemporary life have their origins in nihilism and its paradoxical logic, which is simultaneously destructive to and constitutive of society. Yet, in social theory, nihilism is a surprisingly... more
Most significant problems of contemporary life have their origins in nihilism and its paradoxical logic, which is simultaneously destructive to and constitutive of society. Yet, in social theory, nihilism is a surprisingly under-researched topic. This book develops a systematic account of nihilism in its four main forms: escapism, radical nihilism, passive nihilism and active nihilism. It especially focuses on the disjunctive synthesis between passive nihilism (the negation of the will) and radical nihilism (the will to negation), between the hedonism/disorientation that characterizes the contemporary post-political culture and the emerging forms of despair and violence as a reaction to it. The book consists of three parts. Part I deals with the historical significance of nihilism. Part II focuses on the social topology and the literary and cinematic spaces of nihilism. Part III links the first two parts together by elaborating on the possibilities of overcoming nihilism.
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I treat despotism as a virtual concept. Thus it is necessary to expose its actualizations even when it appears as its opposite, refusing to recognize itself as despotism. I define despotism initially as arbitrary rule, in terms of a... more
I treat despotism as a virtual concept. Thus it is necessary to expose its actualizations even when it appears as its opposite, refusing to recognize itself as despotism. I define despotism initially as arbitrary rule, in terms of a monstrous transgression of the law. But since the monster is grounded in its very formlessness, it cannot be demonstrated. However, one can always try to de-monstrate it through disagreements. In doing this, I deal with despotism not as a solipsistic undertaking but as part of a constellation that always already contains two other elements: economy and voluntary servitude. I give three different – ancient, early modern and late modern – accounts of this nexus, demonstrating how despotism continuously takes on new appearances. I conclude, in a counter-classical prism, how the classical nexus has evolved in modernity while the focus gradually shifted towards another triangulation: neo-despotism, use and dissent.
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Art on Terror: The Incendiary Device of Philosophy. Reeve, Hester; and Bayly, Simon; and Diken, Bulent; and Trehy, Tony. (2005) Art on Terror: The Incendiary Device of Philosophy. Artwords Press, London. ISBN 978-0954390860. Full text not... more
Art on Terror: The Incendiary Device of Philosophy. Reeve, Hester; and Bayly, Simon; and Diken, Bulent; and Trehy, Tony. (2005) Art on Terror: The Incendiary Device of Philosophy. Artwords Press, London. ISBN 978-0954390860. Full text not available from this repository. ...
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Focusing on the connections between the artwork and its internal and external network, the article presents four different approaches to the sociology of art developed by Lyotard, Bourdieu, Luhmann, and Hennion and Latour. While Lyotard,... more
Focusing on the connections between the artwork and its internal and external network, the article presents four different approaches to the sociology of art developed by Lyotard, Bourdieu, Luhmann, and Hennion and Latour. While Lyotard, from a phiosophical point of view, emphasizes the transcendence of the artwork in relation to its network, for Bourdieu the work of art is part of a network and the ‘social genesis’ grounds the artwork as an artwork. In contrast to Bourdieu, Luhmann conceives of art as an autopoietic system and the artwork as a communicative artefact. Yet, in this, the materiality of the artwork disappears in communication, which is why Hennion and Latour’s approach to the world of art as heterogeneous networks of human and non-human mediators is significant. ‘Thinking with’ these different approaches, the article produces three main results. First, Bourdieu’s and Luhmann’s otherwise very different sociologies significantly parallel each other regarding arts and mod...
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Helsinki Photography Biennial is a series of events organized by the Union of Artist Photographers in the spring of even years, which showcases Finnish and international photographic art. In 2014 the biennial is produced by the Union of... more
Helsinki Photography Biennial is a series of events organized by the Union of Artist Photographers in the spring of even years, which showcases Finnish and international photographic art. In 2014 the biennial is produced by the Union of Artist Photographers and Photographic Gallery Hippolyte in collaboration with the Finnish Museum of Photography. The special issue follows the structure of the biennial: Ecological Fallacy, curated by Basak ¸Senova (with a special section co-curated by Branko Franceschi) begins after the foreword, followed by the artistic-scientific section by Mustarinda, called Objects on Oil. The sections approach the theme of the biennial from slightly different points of view, and are in dialogue on many levels. The schedule of the biennial, along with the exhibitions and events locations, as well as the authors of the texts and the organizers, are introduced at the end.
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The article thematizes the actuality of despotism through a double reading of Xenophon’s Hiero and Dave Eggers’s Circle. A key text on despotism, Hiero is interesting to reconsider in a contemporary context because of its explicit focus... more
The article thematizes the actuality of despotism through a double reading of Xenophon’s Hiero and Dave Eggers’s Circle. A key text on despotism, Hiero is interesting to reconsider in a contemporary context because of its explicit focus on the economic element in the nexus of despotism, economy, and voluntary servitude. Discussing this nexus in an ancient context, the article turns to The Circle, a dystopic novel from 2013, which elaborates on how the attempt at creating a transparent society results in the perversion of democracy to the point where a despotism fueled by economization and voluntary servitude becomes immediately evident. Notwithstanding the significant differences between the two perceptions of despotism that proliferate in Hiero and The Circle, their shared focus on the nexus of despotism, economy, and voluntary servitude testifies to an interesting case of convergence in divergence. Offering an account of this continuity, the article ends with reflecting on this ne...
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1. Introduction. A Sociology of the Camp? Part 1: Theorizing the Camp 2. Exception and Emergency 3. Biopolitics 4. Risk and Terror Part 2: Inside the Camp 5. Spaces: From Refugee Camps to Gated Communities 6. Bodies: From Rape Camps to... more
1. Introduction. A Sociology of the Camp? Part 1: Theorizing the Camp 2. Exception and Emergency 3. Biopolitics 4. Risk and Terror Part 2: Inside the Camp 5. Spaces: From Refugee Camps to Gated Communities 6. Bodies: From Rape Camps to Sex Tourism 7. Fantasies: From Fight Club to September 11 8. In/Exclusions: From Favelas to the Spaces of Stardom Part 3: Escaping the Camp 9. Ethics After the Camp 10. Sociology After the Camp
Concomitantly, mobility as destiny and mobility as fate are different. And such divisions point towards different social topologies of mobility. Whereas increasing mobi-lity can bring liberation in one social topology, it can create hell... more
Concomitantly, mobility as destiny and mobility as fate are different. And such divisions point towards different social topologies of mobility. Whereas increasing mobi-lity can bring liberation in one social topology, it can create hell in another.2 Secondly, mobility is a relational ...
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The article elaborates on Arendt’s take on the religious and the political and on how they interact and merge in modernity, especially in totalitarianism. We start with framing the three different understandings of religion in Arendt:... more
The article elaborates on Arendt’s take on the religious and the political and on how they interact and merge in modernity, especially in totalitarianism. We start with framing the three different understandings of religion in Arendt: first, a classic understanding of religion, which is foreign to the logic of the political; second, a secularized political religion; and third, a weak messianism. Both the classic understanding of religion and the political religion deny human freedom in Arendt’s sense. Her transcendent alternative to them both is the notion of the democratic political community: the Republic. Then we turn to Arendt’s political theology, illuminating why interrogating Nazism is central to examine the relationship between politics and religion in modernity. This is followed by a discussion of Nazism as a type of political religion. We focus here on totalitarianism, both as an idea and actual institution. We conclude with an assessment of the role of profanation in Aren...
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Research Interests: Ethics, Communication, Art, Creativity, Death, and 15 moreBody, Abstraction, Concepts, Discipline, Knowledge, Geometry, Becoming, Capital, Equivalence, Differentiation, Factories, Dimensions, E, A, and Arborescence
This article focuses on party tourism as a kind of hedonism enjoyed on a massive scale in which the citizen is transformed into a ‘party animal’, a reduction which is experienced as a liberation from the daily routine of the ‘city’ or... more
This article focuses on party tourism as a kind of hedonism enjoyed on a massive scale in which the citizen is transformed into a ‘party animal’, a reduction which is experienced as a liberation from the daily routine of the ‘city’ or civilization, and in which the pursuit of unlimited enjoyment creates an exceptional zone where the body as an object of desire and as abject become indistinguishable. In this process, sociality tends to be reformed in the image of a ‘mass’ rather than ‘society’ and transgression/enjoyment paradoxically becomes the law. The article elaborates on this paradoxical notion of ‘forced enjoyment’ by reading Kant and Sade together: Sade (re)formulates Kant’s categorical imperative by universalizing transgression while, on the other hand, Kant illuminates Sade by stressing that the universal maxim and the particular tendencies always conflict.
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İnci Eviner's installation We, Elsewhere 1 for the Turkey Pavilion 2 at the 58th Venice Art Biennial offers a spectacle of the incomplete, in which the objects, videos and their characters, and sounds in the piece, along with the... more
İnci Eviner's installation We, Elsewhere 1 for the Turkey Pavilion 2 at the 58th Venice Art Biennial offers a spectacle of the incomplete, in which the objects, videos and their characters, and sounds in the piece, along with the exhibition space itself, consist all of halves, missing something. It is designed as a non-place in the midst of nowhere, which appears as a liminal space of exception, in which the inside and outside become indistinct. In this respect, the role of the large ramp, which transgresses the public-private divide, is particularly remarkable for it both connects and disconnects the place in relation to the outside, incarnating a paradoxical form of inclusionary exclusion. One cannot avoid noticing the ramp on entering the pavilion: cut horizontally and vertically, the spaces between left void, it is a cross-sectional space experienced through its corridors, area closed off by metal bars, a semi-closed room and viewing area arranged on stairs. However, its interior is rendered visible through the crosssections of buildings and the subterranean. We bear witness to the events inside it, and, ceasing to be spectators, participate in the installation. Through this displacement, we also move from a representational space to a lived space.